Next gen game graphics are hugely unimpressive

[FieryTrainwreck]

Crysis 1 represents the last time I was floored by visual fidelity. Since then, nothing has generated that intangible sense of seeing "something completely new". I've been impressed by various aesthetics here and there, but I don't think we've witnessed any big leaps in the intervening five years.

Having seen all of the Unreal 4 tech demos, I'd say there's still room for a few more "wow" games before diminishing returns set in. The real surprises, at some point, will be in AI and scale/scope.

 

[AngelOfBlueRoses]

See, now if consoles had been working with standard PC architecture for the past generation, I think you'd have seen a fairly noticeable leap in graphical quality.

Diminishing returns anyway. Graphics should be the last thing to focus on when it comes to game design. I'm more interested in what kind of new open worlds or AI can be created on next-gen hardware.

So you'd be fine with things being text adventures or looking like Dwarf Fortress?

No, graphics have a place, like advertising has a place, much to my chagrin. The presentation of your work can vastly effect it's initial reception. After all, go find a short gameplay video of say, Bioshock Infinite. Then take a look at the most recent uberturd, Ride to Hell Retribution and tell me you'd buy the second one based on a preliminary on how the graphics look.

It's like why a dealership polishes all of it's cars. It's not necessary to their function, but it can really help the first impression they make. Good first impressions can improve sales vastly.

That being said, you don't stop buying new cars or hiring the right employees in order to pay for car polish, but it serves a purpose. Do it when it's in the budget. If it's not in the budget, take a look at the budget and see if it's even possible to allocate the necessary resources and still make something good with lacking graphics.

I disagree and agree. Nowhere did he say that graphics don't have a place, just that they shouldn't have as high of a priority as other things. You're right, though, in that graphics do have a place. They have a place somewhere there, but there are things that are far more important, one of those being aesthetics. Graphics will stop you from looking like Dwarf Fortress, yes, which is why they have their place, but aesthetics are what gives them their style, their flavor. A game can be graphically decent, even great, but it needs to have charm and beauty. How many people complain about games overusing brown and grey and such and such?

And then there's cases like Crytek with their Crysis series, which have always been held as a landmark for graphics. Didn't Crysis 3, and Crytek, get lambasted for having no substance? I wonder how many sales they've lost for that compared to the ones they've gained for simply pumping graphics to the max and forgetting everything else. I know they won't be getting mine.

Which brings me to the point. Aesthetics should be considered different from graphics. The latter is technical, the former is the soul. With this in mind, the guy you quoted is right. Graphics should be thought of as a backend priority. Perhaps not dead last, but more of a starting point that from then on is put on the back burner to make way for aesthetics, story, gameplay, scale, scope, AI, etc.

Graphics certainly never stopped Minecraft from becoming popular and were it not so late in the night, I'd bring up countless other games as well.

 

[rob_simple]

The problem here, for me at least, is that I don't give a flying flip about graphics. The launch line-ups for both consoles are drenched in sequels or stuff that just doesn't really interest me; so far there is little to nothing to suggest devs will be expanding the gameplay side of things next gen.

That being said, you could pretty much apply your argument regarding graphics to what I've just said about gameplay: It's still too early to tell.

Then again, all this generation did in terms of moving gameplay forward was make cover-based shooting an industry standard, stick QTE's into everything and pretty much try to wrestle control away from the player at every possible opportunity, so I am not holding out hope for the next generation of mainstream gaming.

 

[chuckdm]

Not to hijack this thread, but if you're looking for a drastic improvement in graphics quality, why not just buy a damn PC already?

I know, "master race" and all that, but for the price of any 2 consoles you can build a PC that outperforms them both. And dude, it's a PC. It can search Google and do MS Word documents and stuff. You're probably gonna have one anyway, might as well get one with a decent graphics card for a whopping $100 more and avoid consoles altogether.

I mean it's not like they don't have emulators and Bluetooth controllers if you absolutely can't be bothered to make the switch to the Mouse. You have options. Really, that's the one grand strength of PC gaming: choice. There's just SO much more of it on a PC.

Anyhow...as to OT, yeah, the graphical improvements seem minor, and no, I don't think it'll be any better in a year, or even 5 years. Why? Because we've hit the "uncanny valley" point now (or almost have) and if games get too much better a sizable portion of the public will get literally nauseated trying to play them. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

So the alternative answer is that even if we have significant improvements in both hardware and games themselves, we may have to "upgrade" the players before they can stand to play them

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Well, maybe you're looking in the wrong place for next gen graphics.
Try looking at the Oculus Rift.
Sure, the dev kits are a bit low resolution, but the experience is still amazing.
Although it isn't that difficult to get motion sickness if it's done wrong.

 

[josemlopes]

Actually they already kind of do, just look at The Division, the amount of detail and scope in that game is seriously impressive.

And I dont get why you make a thread title that isnt all that much related to your opinion on this topic, you could have mentioned Launch Titles in the title for more accuracy.


Either way they will certainly get better and we will get used to them making a game that once amazed us by its graphics look mediocre after some time, its basicly how it usually goes. Perfect Dark Zero "looked" great when I bought it, now it looks like Barbie doll land where everything is made of plastic.

 

[Hagi]

Erm...

You do know that the architecture of next-gen consoles is just normal PC architecture right?

Everything in there is just slightly modified parts of completely normal hardware that you'd find in any PC. A platform that most devs will have extensive experience with.

I'd say the much more likely reason these games don't look as good as they could is that they're being rushed out for launch releases.

 

[masticina]

Yup this is a "first generation" issue. Even having more power and resources they simply haven't yet adapted to it so the Playstation 4 games out of .. 2013/14 will look more like PS3.5

You always gotta wait 2 years before you really see something that the older generation couldn't.

So there you go.. it just is how it goes and that is also why I am not wowwed by the graphics right now. It is nice to see what they can do already. I am more hoping that they are going to use the extra power of the coming generation for gameplay, artificial intelligence, bigger levels and so on!

THAT would be the stuff that for me would make games more fun, better, more interresting. Better graphics.. eh I guess. I mean if they could make Skyrim for consoles, with cities actually being big.. with MANY NPC's living there. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Hell ever since seeing Final Fantasies XII main city.. look how full it is. Yes all these NPC's are glued in place and only have one thing to say if at all. But.. it does makes the area feel like a real city. And in Ni No Kune, again the cities aren't to big..true but they are well filled.

 

[Piorn]

I just wish they'd spend more time on scripting, clever, living AI and generally more depth.
What use is a gigantic Skyrim world inhabited by hundreds of NPCs when they are all lifeless, interchangable husks with one or two dialogue options.
Sure, the graphics might get better along the life cycle, but I don't care. It doesn't dazzle me into a trance or anything.
How about NPCs that react to more than "the one dialogue option they have scripted in" and "being attacked"?

 

[Zipa]

There won't be a massive improvement until Nvidia get around to rolling out the Volta architecture GPUs, they have DRAM stacked directly on to the GPU. So the bandwidth of the DRAM is going to go from about 2GBs per second to about 1TB per second.

It won't make things look massively better than they are now per say but instead of having a beautiful landscape like Battlefield or Crysis that is empty save for the player and the few items they are interacting with it will mean that there can be lots of persistent items in the fore and backgrounds. So in Crysis for example you would get lots of birds flying round or in battlefield you would get lots of jets and such in the background.

Unfortunately though it won't hit consoles until the gen after the PS4/XB1 since consoles work the way they do.

There will be at least somewhat of a jump though for the upcoming gen as most console games currently are not true HD but upscaled 720p. The new consoles are more than able to run 1080p native. That and they have more RAM so you will get far less texture popping like what Rage and battlefield 3 suffered from.


http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/19/nvidia-roadmap-volta-gpu/

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

As was said before, we've hit diminishing returns when it comes to graphics, so you're not going to see a major improvement even a few years down the line. Now it's more that they can cram a lot more objects on screen at the same time.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Well, while I understand your overall point, and I agree, the new generation probably will still pull off some impressive new stuff eventually, I have to say I suspect we're starting to get into different territory here.

That of diminishing returns. - As graphical capabilities increase, the apparent improvements don't look as impressive, even if they are in an absolute technical sense, in terms of how they come across, they start to seem minor, or trivial past a certain point...

And I suspect we're quite far into the 'it barely makes a difference' territory by now. At least, in terms of graphics...

Which, in a way is a good thing, because it means we might finally start to see improvements in areas other than graphics.
Because those have really been long overdue...

But as to launch titles...

See, I haven't been impressed with a new console launch since the days of the N64.
That was the last time I actually felt like a new console gen was an obvious leap forward.

Since then... Well, it has been noticeable, but not exactly dramatic. It didn't stand out as a huge leap. Didn't make me go "wow, that's impressive"... More... Just. "eh. Better than the old generation I suppose.".

That's just the way this has been going...

 

[Azaraxzealot]

I think it's important to acknowledge that with the upcoming, newest generation of 'console' hardware, we'll finally get proper HD - the same HD we got promised with the current generation, but only got, what, 480p or 576p blown up to 720p.

Actually... you can look up all the actual resolutions of console games right now. I went through, maybe, 500 of them and determined that definitely more than 70% run at 720p or greater on Xbox 360 (a little less on PS3). And none that I could find ran at 576 or 480p.

 

[___________________]

If it remained like that it would be good. Less focus on superfluous shiny bits that lose interest over the first minutes of gameplay and using the resources to focus more on fun, good writing and length.

I'm not an ork. You can't just paint something red and expect me to be thrilled for months.

Graphics are important, but not as important as people think they are nowadays. Besides, aren't the current gen graphics good enough already? Can't they just focus on the other areas now?

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I think it's important to acknowledge that with the upcoming, newest generation of 'console' hardware, we'll finally get proper HD - the same HD we got promised with the current generation, but only got, what, 480p or 576p blown up to 720p.

Actually... you can look up all the actual resolutions of console games right now. I went through, maybe, 500 of them and determined that definitely more than 70% run at 720p or greater on Xbox 360 (a little less on PS3). And none that I could find ran at 576 or 480p.

Does that statistic include all the little white lies? Like running the game @ 1280x704 or finding other ways of implementing black bars or cheat around the fact that both consoles didn't quite pack the punch?

If I remember correctly, Call of Duty: Black Ops ran at 1040x608, some (if not all recent) Halo games ran at 1152x640, and both got hush-hush upscaled to 720p (1280 x 720). So, while the output might have been 720p, the actual processed picture was at a (significantly) lower resolution, leading to the well-known crude blockiness of some contenders, and even that did not stop all of the lags, frame drops and other various performance issues brought along by anemic system specs barely fit to play in the HD league. You'll also find that a lot of visual fx was utterly absent from the PS3 releases, while the 360 versions maintained some chosen bits and pieces of fidelity the PC version of the same title featured by default (grass in Mafia II, lighting fx in Bulletstorm, etc.)...

...

...

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

If it remained like that it would be good. Less focus on superfluous shiny bits that lose interest over the first minutes of gameplay and using the resources to focus more on fun, good writing and length.

I'm not an ork. You can't just paint something red and expect me to be thrilled for months.

Graphics are important, but not as important as people think they are nowadays. Besides, aren't the current gen graphics good enough already? Can't they just focus on the other areas now?

Au contraire. With the new architecture, I'd expect for things to get more shiny with significantly less effort, so more resources are free for less petty little things like enemy AI, preventing or never running into the issue of CPU/GPU crapping out and much less stressful hassle for the designers and programmers of tomorrow's game. With the current generation, we went through living gaming hell of consoles, aka locked-down pseudo PCs, bringing down and dumbing down gaming in general, as levels/stages/layouts had to be carefully castrated and reduced so that they would fit into the limited resources of the 360/PS3 platforms. This has locked down assets and manpower, hindered creativity and was a general pain in the butt for anyone involved. Look at how far you can take your current PC gaming rig with Crysis, and look what's still in it in Crysis 2 or Crysis 3. We've gained new code, new tricks, new workarounds. But we lost so much more. I'd expect the new generation of locked-down gaming PCs consoles to bring opportunity to do away with all that and focus on the things that really matter: Making proper games with much less suck.

And I really do believe that that's a good thing.

 

[Adam Locking]

I mean when I play the Battle Tower in Pokemon, the more win streaks I get, the more smarter the AI become. To the point where you actually have to know what your up against, which Pokemon to send out, how good are those Pokemon's stats compared to the other, etc. There is a reason why most people can't get the 100 win streak. The AI get so smart in the battles it's insane.
We already have the tech to have superior AI. However game devs don't put that much resources into smarter AI. They simply make them passable and focus on something else.

Wow, they manage to make somewhat smart AI in a one on one turn based strategy game? Tell me more about how advanced that is. That's not particularly impressive. It's not that much different than programming a computer to play chess, something that's taught in pretty much any more advanced programming course.

What I'm talking about is AI that react in real time, and not just one, but groups of them. Imagine a shooter where instead of every level just being a shooting gallery where you kill hundreds of faceless mooks who run at you with no regard for their safety you instead have to face hundreds of enemy soldiers who are smart, who adapt different strategies flank you as a group, react to the different weapons you're using, anticipate how you're going to use cover, make use of covering fire, etc. Current generation hardware tends to chug when you have more than 15 or 20 characters fighting on screen at once, now imagine increasing that number by a factor of 10, and having smart, independent AI for each one. It has the potential to be amazing.

This.

Seriously, real time artificial intelligence is still a long way off, and comparing it to turn-based is just silly. In pokemon you have, what, 6 creatures with 4 attacks each? 24 different options in total (44 if one of your team is ditto and copies your opponents moveset). Having a computer that can play what is essentially a game of rock-paper-sissors with a bunch more options, and plenty of time to calculate a move is NOT complex AI. Especially seeing as the computer has the advantage of knowing every pokemons stats (including the hidden ones) and can compare them at will.

Let's take a shooter. Each enemy would have to know where the player character is (or rather, where they were last seen...), work out where their area of sight is, know which pieces of cover provide a good vantage point, check there are no exploding barrels or similar right next to said cover and knowing which weapon the player has selected to time their shots. Executing complex moves like flanking and drawing fire would require each enemy to work all this out for both themselves and their comrades. This has to be done for each enemy onscreen and has to be calculated in real-time and adjusted every time the players position is changed, cover is destroyed or enemies are flushed out by a grenade or other explosion. In games with two player co-op (rapidly becoming the norm) these calculations are more than doubled, as they have to be done for each player AND to work out potential flanking moves they may try and use.

 

[Vykrel]

current gen games didnt look all that impressive when the 360 and PS3 were new. give the developers time to figure out the hardware.